Living with the Jungle

I had a really lovely weekend, went to the movies with Sarah Cassie Ken and Jason. Saw Ninja Assasins. It was OK. The beginning was incredible, I thought it was going to be great fun. then they spent the next 45 mins with a lot of boring backstory, which was not as fun. Then the end was pretty fun again.

After that I went to Tom and Ilana's where they were hosting an art show. Everything was lovely. I really wanted to buy one of Ilana's paintings. Evan's minimalist video was really neat, I wanted to ask lots of nerdy questions about how it was made, but didn't get a chance. And the other two artists were also very good.

Was supposed to go to NJ Saturday, but it snowed and Dad didn't feel that great, so I stayed home and wrote up my statistics homework instead. Should have read syntax too, but I guess I'll do that now.

This is the last Monday of horribleness this semester. Yey! I have realized that I need to have more people to enjoy the city with before I can feel like it is my own. Hopefully I can build this up next semester.

Tomorrow I will be up in Poughkeepsie because my dad has several important doctor's appointments that my mom wants me to come to. I won't be able to go to them all, but at least I can be there in the morning. I'll be showing my class a video on ape cognition, called Ape Genius. It was really good. I'm being so nice to them, if they just show up to class and answer a couple of questions it will count for 10% of their overall grade. I also gave them the option to do extra credit, but I forgot how many points I told them it would be worth. I hope I said five....

I have the biggest television crush on Moss from "The IT crowd," played by Richard Ayoade.

Behold:




so adorable!

Here's the link to the article I got the pic from.. blog thinggy
Best spin on the "nerd" character I've really ever seen on TV.

That is all, my friends.

I was sent this link from abhyastamita  , the first video at about a minute in is where the real performance starts.

http://catcerto.com/cat_video.htm 

That's a cute cat. 

If Diane Kruger grew up in germany, why was I so unsatisfied with her German accent?
I must not be a very good jugde, or perhaps I just don't know enough about different German accents. I'll have to ask my resident German friend. I haven't talked to her in a while anyway.

Posted via LiveJournal.app.

 Finished "Beneath a Steel Sky" and woah!  discovered Dave Gibbons did the background art and the comic art in the beginning. 

yes, THE Dave Gibbons.

How did I miss this?

Reading the first book of Frank Miller's "Sin City." I really appreciate the art style. Will reserve other comments until I've finished the whole first book, but do have a general comics related observation. 

Why is that in order to be powerful, a woman must be beautiful and sexy. Whereas men come in all kinds of shapes and sizes? I mean it's one thing if EVERYONE is beautiful, that's like some idealization. But normally the male characters aren't beautiful, they are plenty of grotesque characters as well. And it even seems that not attractive is the default setting for male charaters. But the default is always perfect beauty for female characters. With a few "uglies" thrown in here and there. 

Let's get with the program, ok?

 Re-reading "The Scarlett Letter." For some reason I don't remember it being written in such a stiff "educated" tone. I am pleased to discover I still think it's great though. There is nothing more depressing to go back to something you loved as a kid and realize it not only is no longer relevant to you, but it's actually quite terrible as well. 

Yesterday my student mentor over at CUNY emailed me. She seems quite nice so far. Hopefully support will be good at this department. I really need it at this point.

Also have to give a thank you shout out to yoshiinjapan for giving me a good smack in the face the other day. This little girl needs to keep awake and focused on the present. There is no reason to get all confused with the past and the future. That's why I have to keep up my yoga, it really helps clear my mind. Also, the party was great, though I would have liked to stay later, it took a long time to get home! I was a little surprised, there must be a better way that my GPS was not willing to show me. 

Lots of seeing people these last couple of weeks. It's so good to feel connected to a community of people again. It's been a while. wra1th , did you have fun at the waterfalls? I wanted to come. But instead I helped my father with a home improvement thing. We had been planning it for a while since I haven't been at the house consistantly for a while, and he was feeling really great today. I'm thinking of buying the paint and getting started on painting the study tomorrow. It'll be nice to get rid of the white walls finally. 


fd

I hope everyone is out having fun somewhere. I was hoping to go to the Vampire Weekend concert this friday, but I don't think I'll be able to. Ah well. 

DC was a good time. Lots of little silly things that happened to us that I'll likely forget over time. This probably means I should start writing all these little things down in a personal journal. 

I still can't bring myself to write a writing sample, however. I don't know what to say when it's for a job. I can't use any of my academic papers, because they make no sense to non-linguists. I started one about my grandmothers, and how grateful I am to them because if they weren't around I would have never learned Greek well enough to be bilingual in the way that I am. Still not super native, but I could be if I really kept studying words and reading books and stuff.

So, just keeping on doing what my dad keeps telling me to, I keep plugging there. Hoping for the best.

I want to try and create an LJ animated icon for my first flash project, but I don't have any good ideas on a theme. Anyone want to suggest something? 

Also Robyn arrives later today! Horray!

But it's going to rail all week. Boo!

We'll still have a great time tho. Yey!

Since English doesn't have a reliable way of writing out the "th" sound in "those," and usually if an unfamiliar word defaults to the unvoiced sound (like in "thunder") does this affect the production of novel words such that no new words can ever have a voiced "th?"  If we assume that this is the case, then we should we really consider the voiced "th" a phoneme in English? If it is a phoneme why is it that English speakers can't call my father "Thimitris," or pronounce my last name as Kakathelis? It would totally boggle the mind of English speakers I'm sure. 

If a stable trascription was introduced, like "dh" as has been suggested in the past by people trying to do spelling reform, would this eventually allieviate this issue?

I think about this kind of stuff way too much.